Maintaining Dual Fomat

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renowden
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Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by renowden »

Long time since I have been here. Very happy customer.

I am extending my system to support various mobile devices in the family and have come to the conclusion that the best format for them is a lowish bit rate mp3 file. My main library is a mix of formats, mostly FLAC and mp3 Extreme. So ... I am in the process of doing a batch conversion to a new partition using the excellent built in tool but am wondering how to maintain it in the longer term - i.e. I need an easy way to do the conversion either on a regular basis or before sync'ing the mobile devices. If I leave it to a manual method I am bound to forget and the guys will complain. What it needs is a "copy and convert if and only if there is no file already at the target location"

Anyone got any suggestions?
Cheers,

Rick Parsons
nohitter151
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by nohitter151 »

Why don't you just get MM Gold and convert the tracks on-the-fly when you sync to the portable device? ( http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/ ... conversion )

That way you only have to maintain the one library of tracks.
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renowden
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by renowden »

Basically, because it takes too long. My wife has a 64GB iPod. With no cache of the converted files they potentially have to be converted each time she changes her mind and it would take forever.

p.s. I am a Gold user.
Cheers,

Rick Parsons
nohitter151
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by nohitter151 »

renowden wrote:Basically, because it takes too long. My wife has a 64GB iPod. With no cache of the converted files they potentially have to be converted each time she changes her mind and it would take forever.

p.s. I am a Gold user.
The first sync takes a while but after that you only need to convert tracks that have been updated (or new tracks).
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renowden
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by renowden »

Looking at some of the ones that have been converted this afternoon it would also be useful if it recognised that it was up-converting (ie. from a lower bitrate to a higher) and didn't bother in those cases. In my library these are generally archived podcasts and spoken word stuff.
Cheers,

Rick Parsons
Lowlander
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by Lowlander »

That depends on your rules, you'll need to change the rules to prevent this.
renowden
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by renowden »

Rules, what rules? There doesn't seem to be any filter on the input to the Convert Tracks Dialogue.
Cheers,

Rick Parsons
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by Lowlander »

Oh your using manual convert not convert while syncing. In that case I'd advise to create an AutoPlaylist with rules that would only select those files that would need converting.
Teknojnky
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by Teknojnky »

if you want to create a lower bitrate clone of your collection, setup a generic usb device profile and sync your library to it.

ie

you have an external drive or shared network folder

drive letter: M:

path: /music

allowed files: mp3

auto coverter rule: all incompatible files over 250kb convert to mp3 v4 or 5


alternative, you can use the 'virtual cd' function the same way

point the virtual cd folder where you want the files stored and setup the conversion rules

select all files send to virtual cd
Lowlander
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by Lowlander »

I don't think you can have conversion when sending to Virtual CD, conversion only applies when copying from CD.
Teknojnky
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by Teknojnky »

last I remember I think you can, I don't have MM with me, so can't confirm tho

virtual cd essentiall functions as a cache for anything in your library, doesnt have to be a cd.
Lowlander
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by Lowlander »

It doesn't do so by default and I've not seen options to have it do so, also people have requested that it would be possible.
nohitter151
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Re: Maintaining Dual Fomat

Post by nohitter151 »

renowden wrote:Looking at some of the ones that have been converted this afternoon it would also be useful if it recognised that it was up-converting (ie. from a lower bitrate to a higher) and didn't bother in those cases. In my library these are generally archived podcasts and spoken word stuff.
You can already set that up quite easily using the auto-conversion tab of the device profile. I think it would be wasteful and a lot more work (also take more time overall) to maintain a second set of files when you can just convert them on the fly.
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